As far as New England Revolution coach Jay Heaps is concerned, his team is literally jumping from the frying pan into the proverbial fire when it plays Saturday night at Sporting Kansas City.

Weather reports indicate the temperature could be as high as 100 degrees when the teams take the field.

Secondly, Sporting KC (11-6-3), which leads the Eastern Conference by one point over the New York Red Bulls, is coming off a stinging 2-1 loss Wednesday at Houston – a game in which it played a man down for just over a half.

“It will be a hostile environment in which to play,” Heaps said Friday. “We have to be near-perfect in how we play. That’s why we harp on not making mistakes.

“(Kei) Kamara (7 goals, 4 assists) and (C.J.) Spong (5 goals) are two key players and they attack with a lot of numbers. Everyone will have to put in extra effort. But it’s a great time for a great test. We haven’t played well in our last two games and we have a quick turnaround against the top team in our conference. You couldn’t ask for anything more as a player.”

What the Longmeadow native has asked of his players following Wednesday’s 2-1 loss at Montreal is for a greater sense of accountability.

“I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’re making the same mistakes,” Heaps said. “Unfortunately, those have cost us.

“As a staff, we must hold players accountable. The players have to hold each other together. There’s only so much adjusting you can do as a coach. We try to change things here and there. During a game, we want to see more communication between everybody.”

The Revs (6-9-4) made more than their share of mistakes in Montreal, including a foul on Chris Tierney which led to a Patrice Bernier penalty shot that tied the game 1-1 in the 26th minute.

“Going back over our last two games, the Toronto game (a 1-0 loss July 14) wasn’t our best after we gave up an early goal,” Heaps said. “The last game was different in that we never put Montreal under sustained pressure. We had our chances to tie the game, but we were a little bit sloppy when we had chances.

“We put ourselves in a hole. We didn’t defend well on the break-through that led to the penalty.”

The Revs haven’t been able to “break through” on the road. With the Montreal loss, their record as visitors fell to a dismal 1-7-1.

“We go into away games, we’re hyped up,” midfielder Benny Feilhaber said. “We went into Montreal feeling like we could take three points. And we had gotten the Toronto game out of our heads.

“For whatever reason, there’s more than one reason why we haven’t been able to produce on the road. We can’t be asked to win every home game in order to make the playoffs. If you look at our home record, it’s not perfect (5-2-3), but it’s pretty good. If we could do something similar on the road, we probably would have another nine or 10 points.

“We have a big task at hand, and it starts Saturday.”

Whether or not the Revs will be at full strength for that task is another question, considering they played Montreal minus defender Stephen McCarthy (concussion-like symptoms) and midfielder Shalrie Joseph (back stiffness).

“Both are questionable now,” Heaps said. “But when you have this many games in a week, you don’t have much time to prepare.

“We have to defend as a unit. In the last few games, we’ve gotten away from it.”